“The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity,” Justice Kennedy wrote. “By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment.”

THIS OVERNIGHT ADVENTURE KEEPS GOING

DOMA is DEAD. I repeat. DOMA is DEAD.

Proposition 8 was refused by the high court. GAY MARRIAGE RETURNED TO CALIFORNIA

Sam can you tell us about the voter ID law that is sounding a lot like bullshit? I'm just abysmal at understanding ANYTHING unless it's presented through a heavy layer of sarcasm. (I'm not even making this up, and on that note, thank you for laying it all out on Sinfest because it helped me understand enough to finally go to sleep last night.)

But yeah, YAY victory for women and anyone who believes in body autonomy but HOLY SHIT did we really just take a huge step back for people of color?_________________Samsally the GrayAce

Sam can you tell us about the voter ID law that is sounding a lot like bullshit? I'm just abysmal at understanding ANYTHING unless it's presented through a heavy layer of sarcasm. (I'm not even making this up, and on that note, thank you for laying it all out on Sinfest because it helped me understand enough to finally go to sleep last night.)

But yeah, YAY victory for women and anyone who believes in body autonomy but HOLY SHIT did we really just take a huge step back for people of color?

Not a huge step relative to the protections of the VRA overall, but a .. uh, meaningful enough one.

Ok. Anyway. The voting rights shit that just happened last night, translated into EXTRA LAYERS OF SARCASM:

Basically there was this part of the voting rights act that said "there will be ADDITIONAL SCRUTINY given to states that have a notorious history of being shitfucks to colored people (aka the south, and some loose change) and additional requirements they must follow related to this scrutiny."

So basically a bunch of these republican states were being watched by the vra and required in effect to try extra hard to not be shitfucks to colored people. Which turned out to be a GREAT IDEA because nearly all of these places remained conservative bastions full of racism and kept trying a bunch of bullshit designed to stave off non-conservative voters and bias the field in favor of conservative demographics.

SCOTUS yesterday was like "enh, that was like a forever years ago, obviously the world has changed and those restrictions aren't applicable anymore. We should, like, drop that part of the law. I mean if it turns out that racism is still a particular problem in those parts of the world yeah whatever just like ask congress to pass a new law to counter those problems yeah not our problem anymore thx"

(make a flash-cut to a picture of congress represented as an ingrate stump-headed buffoon picking boogers out of its misshapen nose) "haha yeah good luck getting me to pass anything lol fleebledee" (flash back to rest of story)

the restrictions drop, because RACISM IS OBVIOUSLY OVER, thank you SCOTUS. Texas in particular wastes NO TIME AT ALL for its ag to reintroduce its shit voter id laws that the VRA previously shitcanned. He did it in literally TWO HOURS after the VRA got that part gutted.

It is a PERFECT EXAMPLE of a SHITTY VOTER ID LAW that is sold to americans as being a necessary means to combat the scourge of Voter Fraud. But voter fraud doesn't really exist as a problem, that's just what they use as an excuse to sell it. It is painfully obvious to impartial historical and political science observers that the purpose behind these laws is 100% to try to disenfranchise voters most likely to vote liberal and make it easier for conservatives to vote wherever possible. That is solidly, undeniably, 100% the case. It's so blatant.

How blatant? OKAY using the texas voter ID law as an example. YOU HAVE TO HAVE AN ID TO VOTE, says the law, AND ONLY SPECIFIC TYPES OF ID'S ARE ACCEPTABLE, WE HAVE CONVENIENTLY SELECTED WHICH ONES.

When Team Texas tried to ramrod this through (say it! say team texas!) the provision of the VRA that put texas under the eye of the extra scrutiny class of states went "wow a historically racist shitbag state sure seems to be trying to pass a law that circumstantially would exclude minorities from voting, a little lots" and denied its pre-clearance.

Texas GOP harrumphed and appealed and whatever and that's where it was left.

Texas GOP was also incidentally at the same time trying to push through a new partisan redistricting map which was the most blatantly obvious attempt to pack/crack the blacks (how wack) since the time Tom DeLay tried it and got that one smacked back, that's a fact. It was SO BLATANT. Good lord. And this is where the texas gop starts looking like cartoon villains: WHEN THE TEXAS GOP DREW UP THIS REDISTRICTING PLAN, IT WAS WHITES ONLY. THEY LITERALLY DIDN'T EVEN INVITE OR INFORM THE NON-WHITE REPRESENTATIVES OF THEIR OWN PARTY TO THE ASSEMBLY WHERE THEY DREW UP THIS MAP. yes they are that terrible.

VOA's extra scrutiny, indeed, also looked at this and went "are you for fucking serious" and denied its preclearance.

And lo and behold that is where we stood some hours ago before the scotus shitcanned the whole extra scrutiny part of the voting rights act, to which Texas' IMMEDIATE response was to put those two shitpiles through with obvious and clear intent to keep non-conservatives from voting, and to keep only conservative votes as meaningful, and to keep the texas state representation as heavily unrepresentatively red as possible.

SUPPLEMENTAL: this is a brilliant and short video that describes the three principal methods of using gerrymandering to dick minorities. STACKING, PACKING, and CRACKING. Just watch it a couple of times and watch the graphics that visually describe how republicans redistrict shit.

The other parts of this thread title are interesting too.
SCOTUS struck down key parts of DOMA, but didn't take a firm stand on Prop 8. They just dismissed the appeal, as was generally expected, by ruling that none of the Prop 8 defenders had standing to bring the case to them. Essentially they rule that the previous court shouldn't have ruled on it.
So basically they're letting the next lower court rulings stand for now, and with nobody (who has standing to do so) willing to defend Prop 8 in courts, it's basically dead.
That means there's still no SCOTUS-defined precedent for declaring all similar state-level laws as unconstitutional, and the rulings against it only apply within their own jurisdictions instead of nationally.

The DOMA decision was much punchier. The real development is ruling that the law, by defining marriages eligible for benefits as a union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, denied equal liberties as protected by the 5th amendment. It was illegal discrimination. NPR has a blog post explaining much of the implications for this decision. As far as the federal government is concerned, legally married same-sex couples can get their federal benefits just like hetero couples.
The problem is that this still doesn't overturn the various state-level bans on gay marriage, or the state laws that treat same-sex unions differently when it comes to state-level benefits. A same-sex married couple moving to a state that doesn't recognize their union can still be taxed differently by the state than a hetero couple, or their marriage may not be recognized for other purposes.
More legal challenges to those discriminatory laws, like the one against Prop 8, are going to need to percolate through the court system before we can sort this out.

“The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity,” Justice Kennedy wrote. “By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment.”

THIS OVERNIGHT ADVENTURE KEEPS GOING

DOMA is DEAD. I repeat. DOMA is DEAD.

Proposition 8 was refused by the high court. GAY MARRIAGE RETURNED TO CALIFORNIA

Holy shit good things come in pairs, or if you include the Texas abortion bill failing, in triplets.

Also I thought we had already confirmed that the Texas GOP was essentially Dick Dastardly with a bunch of handpuppets._________________Juke Joint Jezebel

If rape kits worked like that, wouldn't they technically be abortions?

I think that's the (and I use the term very loosely) "reasoning". That rape kits are tools of abortion. Excuse me, I'm going to stand back a bit since the insane troll logic involved might cause your brain to explode and these clothes are clean._________________I aim to misbehave

Wouldn't they be more like a contraceptive, since they'd be preventing the semen from reaching the egg? Unless they were saying a rape kit is used to pull out fertilized eggs? Because it reads to me like they were saying rape kits might prevent a raped person from becoming pregnant - and oh what a horrible thing that apparently is!_________________::lesser crisis mode::